Background to the War Nobody Won: A Century of Peace in Europe, 1815-1914 The massive casualties of the Napoleonic Wars that ended in 1815
finally taught the warlike Europeans to hate war. The
“balance of power” designed by the diplomats at the Congress of Vienna (1815)
helped to curtail Europe’s historic tendency to settle national differences via
bloody conflicts. Except for limited regional
wars such as the Crimean War between Russia and Britain (1853-56) and the Franco-Prussian
War (1870-71), Europeans enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace and stability before
the “Great War” erupted in late summer 1914. The Rise of Modern Germany Upsets the Balance of Power Before 1871 Germany was actually a loose confederation of independent kingdoms known collectively as the Holy Roman Empire. The largest of these kingdoms, Prussia, increasingly dominated the other German states; the Prussian king’s chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, put together a plan to weld the German-speaking kingdoms together into a modern nation-state under the rule of Prussia. He accomplished this at the successful conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War with his fellow German princes hailing the Prussian King Wilhelm as their new “Kaiser” (Emperor), Wilhelm I of the German Empire. The heavily industrialized new Germany soon possessed the most powerful economy in Europe and sought a military to match. The diplomats of 1815 had not figured a united Germany into the balance of power. For better or worse, the arrival of Germany as a world power almost over night upset the traditional alignments within Europe.
After the Franco-Prussian War both France and Germany sought to outmaneuver each other diplomatically. Under Bismarck’s direction, Germany’s foreign policy focused on keeping France isolated and vulnerable. France, devoid of strong European allies, had to keep an ever-watchful eye to the east where the Germans founded The Three Emperors’ League consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. This was a powerful military alliance although Germany often had to mediate disputes between their Austrian and Russian allies. Both had greedy eyes for the small and weak Balkan states such as Bosnia and Serbia. This plan worked well until the new Kaiser Wilhelm II inherited the throne; the younger emperor proved to be a meddling, short-sighted dilettante who fired Bismarck and took over Germany’s foreign affairs himself. In a blunder of monumental proportions, Wilhelm II dismissed Russia from the three-power alliance to show his solidarity with the Austrians. Shortly thereafter, the French succeeded in signing the Russians to a military alliance in which each promised to treat an attack upon the other as an attack upon itself. This basic framework (Germany with Austria-Hungary versus France with Russia) formed the basis of the future World War I alliance system. Eventually, the French would bring the British into the pact with Russia (The Triple Entente, 1908). All of the major powers also had “side deals” with smaller neighbors. These alliances were supposedly unrelated to the overall alliance system. For example, the Russians had an alliance with their fellow Slavs in the Balkan kingdom of Serbia. When the Great War began in 1914 Germany had recruited Italy and Turkey. Both Germany’s and France’s alliance systems were designed to prevent war by making the cost of war too high. Ironically, the alliance systems themselves led to the war. How the War Began European leaders were ready for a fight long before 1914. Germany’s ambitious naval and colonial expansion irritated and worried Britain, France and Russia. Of course, the British, French and Russian leadership had nothing against militarism and imperialism for their own countries. Thus, a long-simmering arms race and equally long-term colonial rivalries provided the powder-keg of war; all that was needed was for someone to light its fuse. The Fuse In late July 1914 the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, toured the recently annexed province of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the
troubled Balkans. He insisted on an automobile tour of the Bosnian capitol of Sarajevo in
spite of the presence of a hostile Serbian minority in the city who desired annexation by
Serbia and who hated Austria’s presence there. Sure
enough, a Serbian militant assassinated the Austrian and his wife.
Seeking vengeance for the death of their heir-apparent, the Austrians
blamed the Kingdom of Serbia and launched a punitive expedition at Belgrade. The Serbs called upon their allies the Russians
for assistance. When the Russian military
began mobilizing, the Germans issued an ultimatum for their eastern neighbor to stand down
or the Germans would have to assume the worst about Russian intentions. Not-so-secretly the German High Command, along
with virtually all the overconfident General Staffs of all the other major powers,
relished the idea of a “preventative war” to settle the tensions that had been
mounting. Each side’s generals assured
their governments that they would be victorious. And
so the “Great War” roared into life with Austria declaring war on Serbia, the
Serbs’ allies Russia declaring war on Austria, the Austrians’ allies Germany
declaring war on Russia and the Russian’s allies France and Britain declaring war on
Germany. The Course of the War Before U.S. Entry, 1914-1917 Despite elaborate pre-planning, the war did not go as hoped for by
either combatant alliance. Fighting inside
France stalemated into a deadly war of attrition fought between highly symbolic trenches
whose depth and muck proved emblematic of the war itself.
After years of fighting, neither side held a strategic advantage on the
Western front. In the east, however, the
entire Russian effort neared collapse within two years.
U. S. President Woodrow Wilson announced an American policy of
neutrality but American society had closer business and cultural ties to the
“Allies” (especially the Triple Entente’s Britain and France) than to the
Central Powers’ Germany and Austria. This
was reflected in the volume of “neutral” American trade carried on with Britain
and France. Both sides sought to interrupt
American shipping to their enemies; the Allies were more successful at this, supported as
they were by the powerful British navy. Desperate
to halt the flow of U. S. manufactured and farm goods headed to the Allies, the weaker
German navy resorted to submarine warfare against American shipping. Unlike the Allies’ navies, German
“U-boats” could not capture merchant ships.
They could only sink them. Inevitably,
this pushed Wilson closer to war, a position heartily supported by America’s most
powerful banks, which had loaned considerable sums to the British and French war efforts. Eventually, in April 1917, Wilson asked the
Congress for a declaration of war against Germany and the Central Powers.
For a detailed narrative of America’s involvement in World War I, read your text's discussion of that topic. For a detailed chronology of the war, visit the PBS web site “The Great War” (especially
the timeline). To view a large collection of World War I
photographs, visit the University of Kansas web site, “Photos of the Great
War.” America’s Intervention Hastened the End of the War The arrival of the American Expeditionary Force under the command of
General John J. Pershing bolstered the exhausted Allies in the face of a new German
offensive in the spring of 1918. After
turning back this last German thrust, the Allies launched a two-month offensive campaign
of their own that rapidly drove the Germans out of France.
At that point, the German government elected to negotiate a cease-fire
rather than have Germany suffer the ravages of twentieth century war visited upon France. The Germans were influenced, in part, by the
American President’s “Fourteen Points” announcement of America’s
benign war aims. After reading your textbook's explanation about the end of the war, take a look for yourself at Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles, especially Part VIII, Section I, Article 231 which deals with placing blame for the war. |
